Brady's voice interrupted. "He's a sleeper, and you know it. He's not a part of this shit, Mal."
I flattened myself against the wall around the corner from them. Now I could smell the smoke from Brady's Camels, hear the quaver in his voice. That particular vibration struck an answering string in my mind. "You can lie to me. I don't give a fuck."
Things started to come together, but I was too busy eavesdropping to sort it all out. On the one hand, I wanted to interrupt, to drag that little bastard Mal out of the alley by the scruff of his neck and shake him stupid. For interrupting our coffee, for torturing Brady, for starting a fire in the middle of a damn Italian restaurant. The violence of the impulse was so foreign, I couldn't even figure that much out. I wanted to hurt him, even if I had no idea how.
On the other hand, whatever was going on obviously wasn't going to come to a happy resolution. Brady was a runner by his own admission. Whatever issues he had with his family, whatever instilled in him this need to flee, he needed to face it his way. Who the hell was I to interfere?
Just some guy who fed him poetry and pasta in return for music and laughs.
Just some guy he wanted to fuck.
So I waited, hands still clenched in the pockets of my track jacket. Unwilling to interrupt but unwilling to leave, knowing what this guy could do.
This is when a rational human being might've asked, "But what, exactly, can I do against someone who can call up fire out of thin air?" It was also the limit of my capacity for reason just then.
I had time enough to turn all this over in my mind before Mal made another reply, this time in a calmer voice. "He's part of it if someone makes him. I know he saw us last time."
Quiet for a few seconds, and I drew my fists out of my pockets.
Then Mal continued, voice even lower so I had to strain to hear. "But you're still here having a sweet little afternoon date, huh?"
"No thanks to you, fuck-o."
"You either told him, or he's as dumb as he looks."
There was a skid of rubber soles and a lot of rustling, then a sound like meat slamming against the brick.
I couldn't help it. I looked around the corner to see Brady crushing his cousin against the wall, Mal's collar crumpled in his fist.
Mal grinned—something like Brady at his most wicked, but nowhere near as charming. "Hey, remember when you used to show that kind of loyalty for me? For your own flesh and blood?"
Brady let him go and took a few steps backward, glaring cold and bright blue.
Mal held out his hands in front of him as if in surrender, leaning comfortably against the filthy wall. "Just come home for a week. See the plan. It's in and out, man, I swear, but it's a big one."
Brady flexed his hands. His nails glittered with ice, though I never would've noticed if I hadn't been looking for it. His gaze shifted, restless.
Panicked.
Mal seemed to deflate. He hung his head. "We can't do it without you. Just once more, I swear. Then we're out of the game."
"I've heard that before." Brady turned as if to leave the alley.
My gaze caught his. His mouth fell open.
"Don't you dare walk away." Mal clapped him on the shoulder and spun him around.
Brady knocked his arm away and raised a fist.
"You're gonna fight me?" Mal spat, literally. I could see it flying. "Me? I'm all you got, dickhead."
"You gonna—" Brady's voice cracked. "Gonna give me a choice?"
Mal's mouth twisted. It wasn't just anger in him, not by miles. If Brady's voice had cracked, Mal's was shattered when he said, "You abandoned me. You owe me this."
"Fuck you."
I think Brady said something else there too, but I couldn't hear. There was a great whooshing sound, and a wall of fire flashed to life between them, roiling outward like a digitally manufactured Hollywood explosion. The force of it lifted Brady off his feet and knocked him backward ass-first, arms and legs splayed, head thrown back.
I was in the alley before that—not as a result of any conscious decision on my part, because I'm still not sure how I got there—and I barely kept his skull from cracking against the pavement by sliding on my knees and catching his shoulders. Even through his zip-up hoodie, the cold rolled off him like a block of dry ice, and his hands were coated in sparkling white frost. His gaze met mine but skittishly refused to hold it. He let me help him to his feet, though.
Mal held up one hand, a little ball of fire floating above it, arms flexing and murder in his eyes. They were dark gray-green, stormy—nothing like Brady's.
I had never known what it was to really, truly be hated. But it occurred to me that this guy was actually capable of killing me.
Brady shoved me behind him. "Get out, Et."
"Yeah, Et." Mal sneered, though his focus never left his cousin, flashing with his own fire. "It's hot up in here."
"They do have prisons that hold people like you, you know." The words were level, nearly sarcastic, but I heard the quiver in Brady's voice again.
Mal's fire intensified to bright white. It raced all over his hands, up his arms, and then gathered into an even larger globe between us. The force of it, the heat parched my face, almost staggered me.
Then I felt the cold radiating from Brady in front of me, forcing it away. "Get back, Et. I mean it. This is gonna hurt."
"Get back, Et," Mal mocked, high-pitched. The fire jumped. The heat surged forward; the cold answered it. The smell of ozone crackled in the air.
I took about two steps backward but couldn't make myself leave him.
"How many times have we tried this, asshole?" Brady snarled. "You can't beat me."
"You been gone a long time, cuz." Mal made the last word an insult. "I been practicing while you been faking it."
The cold flared, seeping through my jeans, my jacket, leaching the warmth from my muscles. My nose went numb.
"Call it off, Mal," Brady said. "Go home."
Mal's jaw twitched. "You don't know what it's like, just me and—"
"Then fucking leave."
The heat cut through the cold. The fire climbed so high, it seemed to engulf Mal's whole body.
Brady staggered backward, frost creeping over his hoodie, his breath hanging in frozen clouds in the air. He planted his feet and held out his hands, spreading them wide, shaking, mist rolling off his fingers. Still, the fire came closer, closer.
My blood rushed so loud in my ears, it drowned out all other sound. I searched the alley for something, anything, to help, my bones aching with cold. A few half-broken bricks were stacked in front of the narrow door behind me. I stooped and grabbed a couple, my hand shaking so badly I dropped one and nearly ripped off a fingernail fumbling to get it back. Then I stood and chucked it past Brady's head—right into the fire.
It hit something. There was a grunt, and the fire guttered.
I sent the other chunk of brick right after it, which got me an angry "The fuck?" and another flicker for my efforts. This time, Brady was on it. He leaped forward, hands still out in front of him, growling with effort.
The cold physically battered me backward. It was as much an explosion as the fire had been, centered around Brady and rushing out from him like a crushing wave, like a frigid mushroom cloud, accompanied by a sudden, sharp flash of white light. Frost sliced through fire in the split second it faltered, revealing a doubled-over Mal.
I closed my eyes against the razor-sharp iciness, staggering away. I sucked in air, and my lungs seized, frost-burned. My eyelids might've frozen shut. I tripped over the bricks, slammed into the nearest wall, and cracked the back of my head painfully before I finally steadied myself against it.
When I could pry my eyes open, a perfect circle of frost shimmered on the ground, the center of which was Brady on hands and knees, head hanging low. Tiny icicles clung to the brick walls, winter-sharp and pretty. Mal was flat on his back, eyes closed, lips an alarming shade of grayish pink, although his chest moved up and down evenly.
; Brady's arms quivered, his elbows bowed, ready to give.
I stumbled to his side and pulled him into my lap. Though I felt as if I'd spent an hour in a meat locker, the pure cold surrounding him still soaked through my clothes, squeezing a shiver out of me. Little crystals of frost glinted in his hair, poking into my chin and neck as I tugged him up to sit. He breathed, frigid but steady. His eyelashes sparkled with moisture, suspended like tiny diamonds. The tangled spiderweb of his dark blue veins crawled across his face.
"That was cheating," he whispered, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his discolored lips.
"Hang on." I hardly recognized my own voice. "I'll call 911—"
He grabbed my hand before I could. "We're fine. Happens all the time."
Mal stirred and tried to lift his head. His eyes opened, sought out Brady's. Then he closed them again, let his head hit the ground, and took a deep, shaky breath. In a weak, almost laughing whisper, he said, "I hate you, Brady."
Brady inclined his head to look at him, coughed out a laugh of his own, and, as sincerely as I'd ever heard him say anything, replied, "I love you too, man."
This time when Mal laughed, it was a little bit hysterical. Like a man about to collapse into uncontrollable sobs.
Brady inhaled deeply. His attention fixed on me again. "Just take me home and put me in the bath."
"Will he…?"
"Take me home, Et. Please."
CHAPTER EIGHT
We left Mal sitting up in the alley, weak and something near to desperate but regaining his color. I dragged Brady home and drew a hot bath. His eyelids drooped low; he scarfed three candy bars and chugged several energy drinks, sitting on the closed toilet and letting the steam rise up to warm his face. Silent, staring, half-asleep.
I helped him into the bath and left him soaking there, his veins finally receding from view, his skin flushing with life again, his eyes closed and a faint smile on his face. I wandered into the kitchen to stare at the counter, my hands bunched into fists, reliving the whole god-awful, incredible scene again and again. Amazed by all the things I'd never suspected in my twenty-eight years. Appalled by all the things I'd accepted at face value—both then and now.
And I tried not to wonder what he'd do next. What it all meant.
Whether he'd have disappeared if I hadn't followed him into that alley. Whether they would've knocked each other unconscious—or worse, whether Mal would've won—and Brady's panic would've taken him far, far away. Back to them. Or away from it all. Whether that would've been better for him.
The memory of it—his blue veins, his bloodless lips, his frost-rimed fingernails and eyelashes—left splinters in my heart. The memory of him telling the guy who'd tried to incinerate him in an alley that he loved him, the distinctive vibration of reluctant sincerity in his voice.
That made it easy, too easy, to imagine Susanne and me, Marcel and me, in their place. My head was throbbing by the time I heard the patter of his bare feet coming down the hall at long last.
He stood just beyond the influence of the kitchen light, but I could see the skin around the winding black tattoos at his arm, his torso rising out of the white towel around his waist, was pink from the heat of the bath.
I sighed away a ball of tension in my neck. "Better?"
He hesitated at the threshold, his jaw working. I had time to look him over, really look. His hair was all wrong, clinging to his forehead. His eyes were clear and bright but sunken, his shoulders hunched, his weight on one foot, the other curled up like a little kid digging out a rock with his toe.
I hadn't realized how much like a corpse he'd looked, all cold like that, until I saw him warm and alive again. Those splinters dug deeper and shattered my heart belatedly; an overpowering rush of emotion that had been held at bay first by adrenaline and then by mind-numbing worry swept through me at last.
I could only be grateful I was sitting down when it happened.
"Yeah. Thanks." He took a step forward into the light and peered around the kitchen like he'd never seen it before. "So, I guess I should piss off now. Unless…"
I eyed him up and down, silently replying, You're pissing off over my dead body. How I'd accomplish this, I wasn't really sure, but I had to keep him with me until he rested, at least. Handcuffs weren't an appropriate option this time, and I didn't want to know what it said about us that they ever were. "Unless?"
He shrugged and scratched at the back of his neck. "I don't know. You want to fuck or something?"
I looked him over again, half-naked in my hall, digging at his imaginary rock, head hanging, lips too pale. I wasn't considering his proposition. I was trying to figure out why he'd suggest such a bizarre course of action.
When I didn't answer right off, he said, "Least a guy can do, huh?"
I closed my eyes tight, face heating. I didn't have the emotional filters in place to deny the welling anger. A long, deep breath, and I opened them again. "Just to clarify, are you implying that I require sex as payment for the use of my hot water?"
"Well, no. I mean, you did kinda save my ass too." He tried to grin. It faltered miserably.
"Is that supposed to be a joke?" I was on my feet with the bar stool rocking behind me, but that was as far as I got. I wasn't sure what, exactly, I wanted to do—I was still a little rusty at the rage thing—but I was pretty sure it was unpleasant.
"Uh, sort of?"
And then it all tumbled out of me at once. Everything that had been building over the last month with him, exploding in my kitchen at the worst possible moment. "You—you are unbelievable, Brady. You steal. You lie. You disappear whenever it goddamn suits you. And I sit here and wait politely for you to decide you might like to see me again. I accept whatever bullshit half-assed stories you concoct about your life, even when it's completely insane and potentially life-threatening—"
He winced.
I took another deep breath. "I'm not—I'm not saying it's some huge sacrifice. Those are my choices, and I would make them over again without a second thought. I'm just saying, I keep doing any stupid thing you ask so I can be with you and"—I struggled to find the words—"and that is what you think of me?"
His jaw worked again. He avoided looking at me directly in that wild, panicky way.
But it would've hurt more to let him go on thinking idiotic shit like that than to shove the truth down his throat once and for all. "Asking me to cuff you to the radiator and have my way with you in a dressing room—that doesn't make up for you jerking me around the rest of the time."
"Thought you liked the radiator scenario."
I actually paused long enough to think, Yeah, I really did. Then I came back to my senses and sputtered, "That is not the point."
"Okay, I'll go." He took a step backward.
"No, you won't."
He gawked but finally looked straight at me. There was a long pause, wherein I imagined he was thinking of the cleverest, most indifferent-sounding way to tell me to fuck off.
But I wasn't giving him the chance. "You were half-dead an hour ago. You're going nowhere. All I'm trying to say is that just because you're damaged, it doesn't mean you get to be a prick. I don't deserve it, and you know it."
Look at grown-up Etienne, standing up for himself all over the place.
And hell, Brady only had himself to blame if he didn't like it.
He shifted his weight to his other foot but still held my eyes. "I'm sorry. I said it because I, um, thought it might be nice. I could use a little…" He moved his head back and forth in a sort of "you know" gesture.
Yep. Still wanted to do something unpleasant. And hug him. Which was admittedly a very pleasant idea, just not enough to blot out the rest of my emotions.
"You didn't look too happy when I offered," he said. "So I thought I'd, you know, make a joke out of it."
I had to close my eyes again, and this time I leaned on the counter for support. Was he, in all earnestness, implying that he still had any doubt in his mind that I wanted him?
After all that?
I very nearly laughed—in a hysterical way. "Jesus, Brady. What is wrong with you?"
"Uh, my ego is a big black hole of suck that can never be filled up?"
Last time I date a musician. Or a punk. Or a thief. Or a superhero. Or someone too hot for me. Or—
Okay, that line of thought was not helping. "I worship the ground you walk on, okay? Now get your hot ass to bed, and we'll talk about this mess with your family tomorrow."
He looked down.
I went to him, took him by the shoulders, turned him around, and steered him down the hall. "I figured most of it out on my own already. Just try to sleep. Please."
"Yeah. Okay." We'd reached the end of the hall and my bedroom door by then, so he turned to face me.
He didn't smell like him, more like my body wash and shampoo. I said, "'Night."
"Yeah." He closed his mouth, then opened it, obviously thinking something he wasn't saying.
I don't know if he saw in my face that I really, really didn't want him to, or if he thought better of it himself. Either way, he didn't ask me to come with him.
It wasn't that I was still angry. I was a little bit of everything right then. I was raw. I didn't regret my eruption, which surprised me, but I knew it didn't make it any more likely that he'd stick around. And that thought, combined with sheer emotional exhaustion, made me ache.
I didn't want to kiss him. Touch him. It was too close, too dangerous just then.
But I wouldn't have been able to say no if he asked. Really asked.
He said, "'Night, Et."
"Rimbaud's on the nightstand." I went back down the hall.
I spent the next few hours pretending to watch TV while I wondered what the hell I was going to do with myself when he disappeared this time.
*~*~*
When I woke to a gray dawn, a painful crick in my neck after spending the night on the couch, and the TV droning on about nothing, he was gone. So was my Rimbaud.
I read his note on the fridge with bleary eyes:
Skipping town for a few days to deal with this bullshit. I'm sorry, sweetheart. You don't deserve this, either.
Riot Boy Page 9